Plaintiff customers in litigation stemming from Hannaford Brothers, Co.’s 2007 data breach were handed a partial victory by the First Circuit on October 20th. The Court held that plaintiffs’ claims for negligence and implied contract should survive Hannaford’s motion to dismiss because plaintiffs’ reasonably foreseeable mitigation costs constitute a cognizable claim for damages under Maine law. While this case, Anderson v. Hannaford Brothers, Co., may be read narrowly to apply only to circumstances involving actual theft and misuse of customers’ data, plaintiffs’ lawyers, who for years have made unsuccessful claims for damages following data security breaches, will likely attempt to broaden this holding to apply at least to other mitigation costs incurred by plaintiffs.